Michael Jackson

A year – nearly to the day – after Epic released the single-disc Number Ones compilation in November 2003, the long-awaited Michael Jackson box set finally saw the light of day. Entitled The Ultimate Collection, the 57-track set spans five discs…

Looking at the cover, which shows Michael and none of his four brothers, one wouldn’t get the idea that this three-disc set is two-thirds Jackson 5 material. While Michael obviously features prominently in the Jackson 5 songs on The Motown Years, he gets one disc to himself. Altogether, this box collects all the essential J5 and Michael singles and more, including 'ABC', 'Never Can Say Goodbye', 'I Found That Girl', 'I Am Love', 'The Love You Save', 'Ben', 'Rockin’ Robin', and 'I Wanna Be Where You Are'. Released in the U.K., it retails for the price of a single disc and is a convenient way to scoop up a large quantity of high-quality ‘70s pop-soul.

Despite the success of Bad, it was hard not to view it as a bit of a letdown, since it presented a cleaner, colder, calculated version of Thriller – something that delivered what it should on the surface, but wound up offering less in the long run. So, it was time for a change-up, something even a superstar as huge as Michael Jackson realized, so he left Quincy Jones behind, hired Guy mastermind Teddy Riley as the main producer, and worked with a variety of other producers, arrangers, and writers, most notably Bruce Swedien and Bill Bottrell…

The best-selling album of all time is 25, and this birthday edition puts new jewels atop the crowning achievement of the King of Pop. Billie Jean; Beat It; Human Nature; P.Y.T.; The Girl Is Mine (with Paul McCartney) and the rest join eight bonus tracks (an unissued song from the Thriller sessions; a Billie Jean demo; remixes by Kanye West, Akon, will.i.am and more) plus a DVD of videos and Michael's famous moon-walkin' moment on the Motown 25 TV special.

The downside to a success like Thriller is that it's nearly impossible to follow, but Michael Jackson approached Bad much the same way he approached Thriller – take the basic formula of the predecessor, expand it slightly, and move it outward. This meant that he moved deeper into hard rock, deeper into schmaltzy adult contemporary, deeper into hard dance – essentially taking each portion of Thriller to an extreme, while increasing the quotient of immaculate studiocraft. He wound up with a sleeker, slicker Thriller, which isn't a bad thing, but it's not a rousing success, either…

"The Bad Mixes" was a limited release CD given out to promote Monster-Cable (hardware cabling that had been used extensively in the making of the "Bad" album to provide crystal-clear studio recordings). The album was never available for sale publicly. Two versions of the album were created - a 9-track version, and a numbered 13-track version (rarer).

The Jackson 5 (stylized as the Jackson 5ive), later known as the Jacksons, is an American pop band composed of members of the Jackson family. The group was founded in 1965 in Gary, Indiana, by brothers Jackie, Tito, and Jermaine, with younger brothers Marlon and Michael joining soon after…

Classic Michael Jackson is a compilation album by American singer Michael Jackson. It was released as part of the The Universal Masters Collection's series. It features Jackson's early solo recordings from 1971 until 1975, including the hit records "Got to Be There", "Ben", and "Rockin' Robin".